Curriculum

Articles About Our Curriculum:

Advancing Structural Competency, Health Equity, and Social Responsibility in Graduate Medical Education

Equity in Progress: Development of Health Equity Curricula in Three Psychiatry Residency Programs

Understanding Homelessness: A Call to Action and Curriculum Framework for Psychiatry Residencies

Since 2016, our CGP residents and faculty, with generous support from the UCLA Psychiatry Residency Program, have collaborated on the development of a series of lectures in public psychiatry and global mental health. These classes are integrated into the core educational series for all UCLA residents. Starting with a handful of lectures and evening events in 2017, this curriculum has evolved to 45 hours of classes (as of 2021) in 5 modules, which are organized around foundational topics and local public health crises.

• Each module features community/public agency leaders and multidisciplinary faculty as class instructors

• Modules approach their topics from multiple perspectives: social medicine, health and public policy, health services research, clinical best practices and evidence-based services

• Our curriculum features experiential learning via site visits to Twin Towers Correctional Facility and Project 180 and other Skid Row homeless services respectively

Our curriculum centers on the following 5 themes to promote careers in public service, locally and globally, and to teach generalizable skills for all careers in psychiatry:

1. STRUCTURAL COMPETENCY: acknowledging the institutional, political, and social forces that are at play in every clinical encounter and healthcare decision

2. SYSTEMS-BASED PRACTICE: navigating and leading systems in order to benefit our most vulnerable patients and their families

3. STRUCTURAL ACTION and ADVOCACY: intervening at the levels of media, legislative action, and institutional policies to promote health equity

4. SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: promoting service-leadership and socially engaged clinicians to benefit under-resourced patients and communities, from the bedside to policy

5. ACADEMIC-PUBLIC-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP: collaborating thoughtfully across medical and other academic disciplines, with local healthcare and social service agencies, and community leaders